When we celebrate daily successes and make small improvements, we move ahead, step by step.Episode 33 – The Irish Woodshed: How trad musicians do (and do not) practice We can best insure our long-term enjoyment by creating habits and routines that let us feel good. If we keep showing up and practicing, good things will happen. The most important ingredient in our progress is attendance. Ideally, we’ll be playing for years or even decades. While short-term goals are useful, classical guitar is a “long-game”. Classical Guitar is a Long GameĬlassical guitar is hard. Our attitudes both on the guitar and off are worth examining. On the flip side, kudos, compassion, and encouragement get us excited and motivate us to do more. It is demotivating and associates negative feelings with our guitar practice. Scolding, admonishing, blaming or berating is not helpful. We can list frequent thoughts and decide which help and which hinder. How we talk to ourselves – the stories we tell, the tone we take – makes a big impact on our experience. We can also review how we thought about guitar and practice. We can take an honest look to decide what elements to keep and which to change in the year ahead. On the other hand, if we have limited time and want to know we’re moving ahead, a detailed practice plan may be more helpful. If we tightly schedule other areas of life, we may enjoy guitar more if we keep it largely unstructured. And we can notice how our organization and practice-planning affects our progress. We can examine what we do when we sit down to practice. Some small changes (like splitting our practice into two smaller sessions) may bring more joy and fulfillment to our practice. We may enjoy guitar more in the morning or the evening. We can consider when we practice, and how this timing affects our work. Most of us have different energy and focus-levels at different times of the day and week. We can notice which serve us, and which to adjust. We can take a close look at our expectations of all areas of our musical life. So we can move our targets depending on our current schedules and situations. Likewise, if we’re a beginner, expecting to play large concert pieces is unrealistic. If we instead make success equal 15 minutes, 4 times a week, we’re much more likely to be proud of ourselves. If success equals 30 hours of practice every week, then 5 hours each week feels like a massive failure. If we set the bar to success very high, we’ll fail more often. Often, how we feel about our practice and progress is related to our expectations. Here are a few areas we can evaluate: Expectations for Guitar Practice We can later use what we find to make the next year even better. And we can do this with no shame or blame. Once we’ve acknowledged our success, we can take a sober look at what worked and what didn’t. We’ve overcome adversity and made things happen.Īnd if we’re still in the game, we can make adjustments and improve going forward. But for most of us, this isn’t reasonable or possible (even if we do have the time).Īnd we’ve also gained skills in other areas of life that will directly or indirectly help our guitar-playing. Sure, we would have gotten further if we had practiced five hours every day like a conservatory student. If we did anything at all over the last year (even just listening to music), we’re ahead of where we were.Įven if there were times when little or no practice happened, we still move forward. If We’re Still in the Game, We’re Moving Forward For this step of our review, only successes matter. And feeling good can motivate us to continue.Īs we acknowledge our successes, we should avoid the temptation to add “.But…”. When we celebrate our wins, we’re more likely to feel good about our progress. #CLASSICAL GUITAR SHED REVIEW HOW TO#Examples of specific wins are: “ I learned how to play a C chord.” and “ I got brave and changed my strings!”Īn example of a more general win is: “ I practiced most of the time, only taking a couple of breaks from regular practice this year. We can pat ourselves on the back for what we did and what worked. Celebrate Winsįor the first step of reviewing the last year, we can celebrate our wins. Instead, we can measure success looking back at where we’ve come from. We can avoid the dismay that comes with comparing ourselves to our ideals. But our goals are like the horizon – always moving into the distance. We always look ahead and want to be better than we are. Then we can adjust going forward.īusiness coach Dan Sullivan calls the space between where we are and where we want to be “The Gap”. We can notice what worked and what didn’t. Instead, we can make a positive review of the last year. So we may feel like we’ve let ourself down.īut this isn’t productive. We may have meant to do more, or be further along. As we look back over a year of guitar practice, how should we gauge success?
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